The
past century has seen a radical change in the
way we stand. Up until the 1920s most people
in the United States stood like this (Fig. 1).
Their support bones-the spine, pelvis, and legs-are
on the same axis. The legs are vertical, as
is the spine, so the body weight is upright
and balanced. I describe people with this posture
as "balanced."

In the '20s the flappers ushered
in a change. Their posture looked like this
(Fig. 2). As you can see, the pelvis shifted
forward.

As a result of this shift, here's what the majority
of us look like today (Fig. 3). The legs are no
longer vertical but slanted, the tops of the legs
have shifted forward over the front of the feet.
And because the legs are slanted forward, the
back has to compensate by leaning backward in
the lower spine, and forward in the thoracic spine.
The body weight is toward the back, forcing our
muscles to resist the pull of gravity. The American
Medical Association reports that 80 percent of
the population experiences at least one episode
of debilitating lower back pain, and I think this
new posture is the underlying reason for most
back problems.

The problem with the contemporary posture is that the pelvis, which is the
center of the body, has shifted off center, and when the center of anything
is off, every other part is affected negatively. For the body, this means
that joints are misaligned and muscles are either too long or
too short. I describe these modern misalignments as being "out
of balance."

Posture is a cultural phenomenon-it is learned.
All children on the earth are balanced until
around the age of three-after that they take
on the posture of the adults around them. Today
it is difficult to find a native-born six-year-old
in the United States who is in balance, and
most adults in industrialized countries are
out of balance. On the other hand, most people
in developing countries are still in balance.
Their joints align at the center of the bones
and their muscles are therefore at their natural
lengths. And because these people are in anatomical
balance, they share postures and movement patterns
that I think are natural to the species.

Hatha yoga assumes balance and many yoga teachers
from India today are in balance-for example,
B.K.S Iyengar and the late Swami Rama. And since
they are in anatomical balance naturally, their
joints are not stressed nor do they have muscular
imbalances. They begin asana from an entirely
different place than we do. Look at the picture
of Swami Rama (Fig. 4). The quickest way to
compare his balanced alignment to our out-of-balance
alignment is to turn the photo upside down and
notice how he hangs straight down from the ceiling
while the person in Fig. 3 does not.